Friday, July 17, 2015

Sometime ago, I found a piece of plywood and a piece of spruce in the garbage. I also had some leftover pallet wood. I decided to make a pair of sawhorses out of all that junk.

First of all I roughly cut the plywood with my circular saw.

For the legs I made a template, printed it out and glued it on the plywood using spray glue.

I made holes for dowels on my drill press and cut out the template with my jigsaw. I used my block plane to straighten the edges and then sanded the round parts of the legs.

To make the other legs I duplicated them using my router upside down and a flush trim bit. But before that I screwed the guide piece and a new one to keep them steady.

I made the rest of the leg pieces with the same method.

I also made a few circles using my hole saw.

Because I made holes for dowels in certain points, I assembled the leg pieces and everything looked the same. Now all I had to do was to pre drill pilot holes and screw everything in place.

I had to make a cut on the top piece of the legs in order for them to provide a straight place for the tops. I used the dowels again to align the two legs together and cut both legs at the same time with my circular saw.

I repeat the process for the other legs. Using the dowels I transferred the previous cut line to those legs as well.

I clamped the tops together and marked the width of the legs using the leftovers from the previous cuts. I adjusted the depth of my circular saw. I made a series of cross cuts with my circular saw and cleaned the grooves with a chisel.

I joined the top with the legs, drilled pilot holes, created counter sinks and screwed everything in place.

From a leftover pallet piece I cut the bottom cleats using a saw and my miter box.

I used a clamp to keep the cleat in place and screwed everything in place.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Recently my PC technician changed the hard drive of my laptop. So I had the old hard disc laying around and I have decided to make an enclosure for it, out of plywood. This way I can still use the hard drive as an external file storage device.

First of all I traced the shape of the disc on a piece of plywood using a pencil.

Then I measured the side of the disc using my caliper.

Using a straight bit on my router I freehanded the hole for the disc on the plywood. I completed the routing process with two passes.

I used a chisel to make the hole a little bit cleaner.

I then measured the outer areas and cut the piece to size with a hand saw.

I straightened the edges on my belt sander.

For the bottom of the case I wanted some ventilation holes. I glued a template on the piece using spray glue and drilled the holes on my drill press.

I used rust remover to remove the template.

For the top of the piece I used a thin plywood piece with my logo on it. I drilled the starting holes on my drill press and cut out the template on my scroll saw.

I then drilled pilot holes for the top screws. I made countersinks using the appropriate bit.

After screwing the top, I used the flush trim bit, and trimmed everything flush with my router turned upside down.

I sanded the piece.

In order for the disc to be locked in place I made two metal brackets.

I cut the pieces out of a scrap metal piece using my dremel tool and a grinding disc.

I drilled the holes for the screws.

I applied a few coats of black spray paint on the piece.

I applied a few coats of clear varnish.

I screwed everything in place, added the sata to usb adapter cable and my external hard drive is ready!